I will explain why I’m giving Hi-Fi Rush a huge 10/10. This is perhaps the most unexpected game in a lot of areas for me as someone who basically played through most of the acclaimed 2023 catalogue of games from Armored Core VI to Baldur’s Gate 3. In fact, had it not been for the enormous competition in 2023, I daresay Hi-Fi Rush like 2021’s Game of the Year “It Takes Two” could have potentially even taken the crown. The amount and quality of content, the super fluid gameplay and engaging mechanics make it unbelievable that more people or YouTubers aren’t talking about this game especially for the original $30 pricetag attached to it or free if you pay for Gamepass.
It’s actually pretty funny how much I enjoyed Hi-Fi Rush considering the first time I or most of us saw it was when it was revealed during the Xbox and Bethesda Dev Direct at the beginning of 2023. First impressions of the reveal trailer for me and my livestream audience felt like it was a cheesy twist on JRPGs that most of us wouldn’t try particularly when the game was made by Tango Gameworks which is a developer studio more known for Ghostwire Tokyo and The Evil Within series; games that are worlds away from the rhythm genre of Hi-Fi Rush. I really don’t have much to criticize about Hi-Fi Rush so let’s get right into what I love about the game and why I recommend playing it if you haven’t yet.
Performance, Settings & Accessibility
First, I really appreciate the efforts the developers put into the accessibility options of Hi-Fi Rush from the various text and voice languages from things like Portuguese to Polish. I really love that they put in a Streamer mode as well for those who want to share the game with others through videos or livestreams and I wholeheartedly recommend also playing the game on non-Streamer mode as music from bands like Nine Inch Nails is present. The variety of options for customizing subtitles, speaker names, font sizes are really nice and yes even how much speaking by the characters can be determined by the player during combat sequences where you really want to hear and feel the musical rhythm. And just like with any other game that has done it, I am going to praise the colorblind mode offered by Hi-Fi Rush which many other triple A games do not offer a lot of the time. It’s nice to see the different color blind types as well like Deuteranopia, Protanopia, Tritanopia are singled out for those who need them and with an intensity setting. There are different difficulty settings including the hardest one that unlocks after your first playthrough of the main story and I have to say that the difficulties are well balanced. Hard and above don’t feel overtly frustrating, they just feel appropriate and gets you into the game even more in some cases.
Overall, performance-wise for the game, it doesn’t take a lot to run the game and bugs-wise, in more than 60 hours of gameplay, I ran into only one bug which was the terminal interaction where the cat can infinitely smack it so the game runs smoothly as well without any significant or insignificant issues that plague other titles.
User Interface, User Experience, HUD (Heads Up Display)
Once I got into the game, I realized there was a huge amount of thought the developers put into how everything would fit comfortably without visually overwhelming the player during the actual gameplay especially once you got into the later stages of the game where you unlocked not just more moves but more companion combos and a larger diversity of enemy types. The User Interface isn’t a headache to play or feel through, the user experience is really straight forward and really comes down to just player skill or recognition of rhythm and elite or boss mechanics more than anything else. I really enjoy how the entire environment, the entire game, the buttons, the background noise, the footsteps of Chai, the protagonist you control, literally are all in sync and it immerses you quite easily in the fights and even the exploration of the different maps you have to traverse through.
Audio, Music and Gameplay
Normally, I talk about audio and music separately from the gameplay for the most part as a lot of games I review do use audio for the tactile feel of actions like the feel of guns or combat, the general responsiveness of the gameplay or even just environmental immersion but as the foundation of Hi-Fi Rush’s gameplay is music we can’t really separate the two areas here.
So let’s talk about the audio effects of, well, everything. I think it’s just really well done and after playing so much of it, there’s definitely a reason why Hi-Fi Rush won Best Audio Design at the 2023 The Game Awards and came close to beating Final Fantasy XIV’s win for Best Music. Everything from the attacks to the movement that can sync up with the beats ingame whether you’re in combat or out of combat is just chef’s kiss. The voice acting for Hi-Fi Rush is really well done as well and while at first you might think some of the acting is corny with some of the writing because well, it can be, the voice actors did a superb job at conveying the life of the characters you meet or talk to. You genuinely start caring about the backstories of your combat companions and even the background characters or at least what the background characters are talking about as you explore the Vandelay campus ingame.
Without these voices, a lot of the jokes, breaking the 4th wall commentary or character lines the developers and writers put into the game probably would have been groaned at or side-eyed quite heavily in my opinion to its detriment.
A lot of the gameplay elements from Hi-Fi Rush definitely reminded me of Kingdom Hearts, Ratchet & Clank and of course one of my all time favorite games “Elite Beat Agents” which is extra brownie points. I’d say while Hi-Fi Rush is a rhythm game it can definitely fall into a few other genres including adventure, platformer and of course action.
The music for every fight whether it’s the streamer mode or non-streamer mode songs is perfectly done and I just really enjoy how much all of it lines up so well with what you decide to do when you yourself sync up with the game. Enemy telegraphs or attacks can also line up with the music as well so it’s a very intuitive game where you’re not just learning the movesets of different enemies but you sort of basically know in your musical bones what’s coming just based on the rhythm of the game and if you don’t have musical taste or skills, you will have some after playing.
The game just feels really great to play, if you can pull off the combos it’s immensely satisfying and if you can pull off the wombo-combos with hitting your combos on beat with your companion skills and a reverb ultimate skill, you might let out an unintentional wooooo or two while playing.
Graphics, Art and Environment
The graphics and art for Hi-Fi Rush are really pleasing to the eye once you acclimate to them. I can’t find a single bad thing to say, of course it’s an exaggerated comic-style presentation but Hi-Fi Rush really embraces the silly, dark-undertone style and just goes all out on it. It’s supposed to be fun, it’s supposed to make you laugh, it’s supposed to make you want to destroy things. The art really helps in getting you to just let go and enjoy the game for what it is and as mentioned earlier in the video, the environment being in sync with the audio and music of the game just brings Hi-Fi Rush to life. As a streamer I will say, it’s just a game I feel you should play instead of watching other people play as it’s just one of those games you just have to play to understand the experience of it and I wholeheartedly just recommend playing it for that experience.
Content and Replayability Are Too Good
Content-wise, I would say Hi-Fi Rush offers a very satisfying level of reward for playtime that I haven’t seen elsewhere in a long while. In Hi-Fi Rush, it’s worth exploring areas not for the sake of exploring areas but because the game rewards you heavily for doing so. Monkey brain sees rare or huge loot, monkey brain is pleased and the game developers understand this simple notion. The ways of getting to hidden areas or exploring the map are also quite interesting and require some thought or careful observation which make the rewards even all the more satisfying to get.
Collectibles such as grafitti art hidden throughout the game can be added to your homebase, certain achievements or feats will also let you acquire parts of a huge homebase mural that would look absolutely awesome. The humor also grows on you quite a bit through the cutscenes, character dialogue and the encounters with random characters and in the end the humor really adds a lot to the charm of the actual content once you realize a lot of the jokes are the developers talking directly to you which was a really nice experience.
Hi-Fi Rush also has an insane amount of content. Beyond the higher difficulty levels, beyond getting the perfect rhythm scores, you also get more content after the first playthrough into a continuation of the story’s epilogue presented in the end credits. It’s not a new game+ model, it’s a continue your adventure and find more new things model after the main story which is again mindboggling considering this art of a game at full price was only $30.
Other systems also get unlocked after your main story playthrough such as a wardrobe where you can customize hairstyles, clothes and accessories or just have full costumes. You also get to buy new songs from a Jukebox, you also get access to THREE NEW game modes in the game such as Power Up! Tower Up!, Rhythm Tower and BPM Rush which are all challenging in their own aspects! You even get to explore previously locked rooms in already explored stages which not only push you to do better on your rhythm scores but to explore the world more carefully.
The best part of all this is that none of this requires you to partake in any microtransactions at all which actually is a reason why despite being so good combined with a couple other factors, the game didn’t make a lot of money for Microsoft. But Hi-Fi Rush yet again shows how good a game can be without microtransactions to incentivize players to stick with a game by just offering them actual reasons to play a game after they beat a chunk of it.
Truly, Hi-Fi Rush was a wonderful and pleasant surprise I wish I had played sooner. I am looking forward to more games now from Tango Gameworks as a result whether it’s a sequel to Hi-Fi Rush or even yet another completely unexpected different game genre as the developers at Tango have proven to be capable of just making a good game.